At the end of January, I flew to the Big Island of Hawaii to teach at a creative writing retreat. The owner of the 50 acres we stayed on was a hippie with white curly hair that flowed down her back. Her dog followed her everywhere. She danced hula for us while we ate lunch. She toured us through the grounds and showed us the “Grandmother Rock,” a boulder under a tree that she said had told her many years earlier how to design the retreat center. She advised us to ask it for guidance.
The land was green and wild. Pine trees stood tall and thin and beyond them lay the sea. Throughout the week, my students visited the Grandmother Rock and received powerful messages—get pregnant, write the book, leave the dude. I’m not one to believe in Grandmother Rocks, but I wanted a message, too.
In the middle of the second night, jet lag yanked me from sleep. I found myself in total darkness—no city lights out the window, no lights inside, either. I got out of bed, disoriented. Intending to enter the bathroom, I stepped into the abyss.
My fall transpired in slow motion. Despite the blackness, I saw, as if from beside myself, my futile attempts to find footing, like the cartoon character who sprints past the cliff’s edge, and then, briefly oblivious, continues running in mid-air.
There’s a writing lesson in this: The most dramatic moments can register as hours, can therefore span pages. Consider Tobias Wolff’s Bullet In The Brain—the split second between shooting and death takes up 45% of the story.